Dante Between Hope and Despair: The Tradition of Lamentations in the Divine Comedy

DURING THE INTERFAITH SERVICE conducted at the Washington Cathedral September 14, 2001, Rabbi Joshua Haberman read verses from the book of Lamentations, traditionally attributed to the prophet Jeremiah. As the book laments the fall of Jerusalem to Nebuchadnezzar in 586 B.C., its choice as a text after September 11 was highly pertinent; chapter three, from which Rabbi Haberman's excerpts were taken, offers some of the few expressions of hope in a book that primarily expresses grief. In addition to the verses read on that occasion, book three includes a cluster of sentiments that have been widely shared in the United States as the nation has grappled with the meaning of the disaster. Americans have felt dismay at the savage blow inflicted by shadowy enemies, and experienced the problematic reflex desiring that vindication, even revenge, which a God involved in history might be entreated to compass on behalf of those believing in Him; but they have also engaged in anguished speculation on why such a fell stroke was visited upon the nation, and in some few cases reflected on where our own responsibilities might lie in provoking such wrath. The text of Lamentations 3 strikes all these notes: astonishment at the magnitude of the losses (v. 43-48), penitential sorrow (v. 42), a mixture of doubt that God may have turned away his face (v. 1-12) with confidence that divine assistance is forthcoming (vv. 31-33, 56), that vindication will be secured (v. 64). Such a use of the text of Lamentations to reflect, filter, and assuage catastrophe has of course a long history; in this paper I will discuss the use made of Lamentations by Dante Alighieri, poet and citizen of Florence. Of the special fitness of Dante for participating in this history there can be little doubt. Of the major long poems of the Western traditions Dante's Comedy is the most immediately and concretely embedded in the historical context that accompanied its composition; for this reason, Dante is perhaps the foremost poet in the West of a history that is lived and understood as a contest in progress, an agon in the Greek sense, through which a providential order struggles to assert itself.

In Jewish worship, the fall of Jerusalem to Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians—as well as the destruction of the city and temple by the Roman emperor Titus, in 70 A.D.—are collectively lamented on the 9th of Ab, corresponding to a date in late July or August on the Gregorian calendar. This was, according to the Talmud, the anniversary of both destructions of the Temple and the city. ¹ In Dante's day, Christians also commemorated the fall of Jerusalem: the 9th or 10th Sunday after Pentecost was "Destruction of Jerusalem Sunday," but was an occasion of mourning only in a very qualified sense, as for medieval Christians the destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman legions was held to be divine vengeance for the crucifixion of Christ by the Jews of Jerusalem, a view Dante explicitly shared. ² But a liturgy of mourning drawing on Lamentations was prominent in Catholic liturgy of the late thirteenth century, as it is still: this is the use of chanted extracts from all five chapters of Lamentations distributed over the first Nocturns of the Matins office on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday of Holy week. ³ In close association with the extinguishing of candles, the service of tenebrae, the chanting of Lamentations during the deliberately truncated liturgies of these offices testifies to the mourning of the congregation for the death of Christ; ⁴ as rendered liturgically, the extracts also impart a strong penitential theme, as each concludes with a refrain (adapted from Hosea 1:12) calling on Jerusalem to return to her lord. Another implication of the liturgical use of these...